Democ­rats expe­ri­ence hope and fear as Biden nips at Trump’s heels

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has nar­rowed the gap with for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, near­ly tying but not over­tak­ing the Repub­li­can in the polls.
The lat­est Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics polling aver­age has Trump lead­ing by 0.2 points, down from more than 4 at the begin­ning of the year. Trump led by 1 in the most recent New York Times-Siena Col­lege and Morn­ing Con­sult polls. Biden’s biggest nation­al lead is 4 points, accord­ing to Reuters-Ipsos.
Trump still leads in most of the bat­tle­ground states. His nation­al edge over Biden also improves when third-par­ty can­di­dates are fac­tored into the equa­tion. But those poten­tial spoil­ers may be start­ing to fade.
From late March to ear­ly April, the strongest of these c …